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Headlines : InternationalIn the Footsteps of Che Guevara: Democracy in South America
Presidential candidate, coca grower and Aymara Indian leader, Evo Morales, the front-runner in Bolivia’s presidential race, delivered a defiant speech in the country’s economic capital as his campaign wound down, vowing to fight ‘parasitic’ businesses that feed off the poor.
Evo Morales®, and his vice presidential candidate Alvaro Garcia Linera, wave to supporters at the Felix Capriles stadium in Cochabamba, Bolivia, during their electoral campaing closing rally.
[Posted By Ryz]Republished from Independent UK / Common Dreams
The red carpet shines like blood in the intense heat of a La Paz summer afternoon. It marks the path of a marching band in colonial uniform, cutting a swath down and across Plaza Murilla, the capital’s main square. The toy soldiers in their Spanish-era coats pass in front of the fresh bullet-holes pock-marking the Council headquarters and march on to the decorative façade of the National Congress. They are flanked by colleagues in combat fatigues bearing tear-gas rifles, a reminder of the unrest that threatens to engulf Bolivia.
Inside the grand and gloomy neo-classical hallways, the Congress is filled with yellowing portraits of the great and good, of European descent, offering a gilt-edged history lesson on who has ruled Latin America’s poorest, highest and most racially polarised country since independence in 1825.
At the end of one of its corridors, just visible through office doors, hangs the more modern image of Che Guevara. Inside the room, he is everywhere. Among the myriad images is a black and white poster showing his patchy, iconic beard and piercing eyes above the slogan, “I’d rather be an illiterate Indian than a North American millionaire”.
Thirty-eight years after his death in the foothills of the Bolivian…
Posted by Ryz
Born and raised in The Netherlands and living in Canada since 2000. Spent most of his professional career in the IT industry for corporations. Now self-employed. Loves music, graphics, science, politics and various other things that happen to pass in...
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in the footsteps of Ché, my ass
Che was captured and executed by the CIA because he was unable to connect with the local indigenous/campesino population.
For better or worse, Evo was born out of a grassroots campesino organization in a region with roots running back to the syndicalist, central vs. local government struggles within the Revolution of 1952. Although, alas, his program is reformist.
Unimportant: Cochabamba is an great city, probably combining the much vaunted Western “modernity and progress” with Eastern, highland poverty. But there are some Cambas (people from Santa Cruz- originally the lower classes although now coopted by the oil/agroligarchy) who would take offense at it being called the economic capital.